


The Tale of Tem Ashardi

by Domimagetrix



Series: Djinnbound [2]
Category: No Fandom
Genre: Adoption and Foster Care, Adult Humor, Angst and Humor, Extreme Bathroom Humor, Folklore, Gen, Hints at Illegal elements, Honestly "Trast" is kind of a tag by himself, Illusion and Shared Images, Trast's Oily Ass Is Entirely Too Frequent An Occurrence, Unfortunate Depictions of Gastrointestinal Distress, Worldbuild Writing, alcohol mention
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-25 13:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15641343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Domimagetrix/pseuds/Domimagetrix
Summary: A chapter-y snippet from the first book I'm writing in the Djinnbound series. Kaid is introduced to a bit of a mystery.





	The Tale of Tem Ashardi

Kaid eyed the evening’s cafeteria options with an inward sigh.

_All the finest government resources the Protectorate can buy, and the sweetsap leaves still look withered as as Dachnavar’s face._

The only other option left him was a bowl of dubious-looking meat chunks marinating in something too heavily spiced for his liking. Proper meal times meant for a wider array of choices, but Kaid had ignored the chiming of his desk clock in favor of paperwork two hours ago, and the cafeteria’s offerings were relegated to prepackaged fare outside those mealtimes.

He slid the glass panel aside and withdrew one of the vegetarian options, knocking a venomous yellow meat container on its edge and righting it with an extended finger. Dim, fluorescent light inside the unit flickered as the transparent door snicked shut. He turned, eyed a gathering of four other agents around a table, took quick measure of his desire for company, and navigated the other empty tables to sit with them.

Trast, perched on a backward-facing chair and reddish-copper hair gelled into aggressive spikes, clapped Kaid on the shoulder as he sat next to him. “About fuckin’ time. You almost missed the best Kosset-night story in the history of both Kosset and stories!”

Kaid poked unenthusiastically at the plastic covering on his meal with a trimmed claw. He glanced back up. “Go on, then. I defy you to make this look any less appetizing.”

Trast made a spectacle of tugging each of his shirtsleeves in turn. “Observe, my good Ir-Dal, as I restore your faith in my disgusting nature.” He held his hands parallel to each other with palms facing inward above the table. “So there I was, fresh from the wrestling pit, and my ass is oily as the basement of an Underground sex den-”

The other three seated with them - Attria, Rech, and Perdik - focused on Trast while Kaid divided his attention between the story and the damnably thick plastic cover protecting its sad treasure of leaf rolls. The bean paste in them had developed dew and looked soggy.

“-I’d had, I don’t know, maybe four swigs of that brandy? You know the kind. Deep purple stuff.” Trast’s sharply pointed ears began twitching in his excitement as his vivid orange eyes met each of the others’ in turn. “And _so much fruit._ I was steeping a mighty case of the bubbleguts, right? So I’m leaving fire tracks in my wake on the way to the bathroom, ass slicker’n fried food, shorts sagging-”

Kaid lifted one of the leaf rolls, watched a lump of bean paste hit the bottom of the container, and had a moment of precognition.

“-got the shorts off, y’know, and I land on the commode. I mean,” Trast paused, looking at Kaid and waggling his eyebrows, “sorta. My greasy ass slid right across and got wedged between the toilet and the wall, but it was too late-”

More bean paste hit the plastic with a wet _thwap._ Kaid sighed.

“-and you know the bathrooms down at the party grounds have those cheap tiles. I’m telling you it sounded like someone had air-dropped fusing gel into a still pond. _Brrrattatatatatat.”_

The other three lost their composure, covering faces with hands or drooping heads over the table. Attria was little more than a pile of curly blond hair vibrating in silent mirth. Rech’s square jaw worked against an outburst and was losing the battle, dark red irises half-hidden in a squint of weakening restraint. Perdik’s tattooed hand slid from his face to his hair, his orange eyes - subdued in color compared to Trast’s - squeezed shut as he snorted. They recovered slowly, little aftershocks of chuckling shared between them, and their attention slid to Kaid.

So did Trast’s.

Kaid lifted the limp, paste-dripping leaf roll to his mouth and took a bite. He chewed, swallowed, licking a bit of bean goo from his lower lip while holding Trast’s gaze. “Sounds uncomfortable.”

Trast looked pained. Even his freckles looked disappointed. “You are all that makes me despair, Kaid. Sex with you must be like installing coat hooks.”

Kaid offered him a neutral smile. “It’s a place to hang your jacket.”

This time it was Rech who snorted, and Attria leaned back in her chair with a groan. Perdik’s thumb swiped below his eyes to clear away the threat of tears.

Kaid’s wrist unit trilled, and he looked down at it while the others pelted Trast with questions. The small display offered a single word.

_Foundling._

His pleasure at Trast’s discomfiture drained away. Excusing himself, Kaid stood and made his way to one of the GIN interfaces at the other end of the cafeteria.

He laid his hand against the hemispherical surface of the terminal, selecting the inbox from among the icons presented. The sole entry was marked “unnamed” - no surprise there - and Kaid tapped the blinking bar to open the message.

_“Litter of one. A girl. Going to adopt, but wouldn’t mind a second opinion.”_

He discarded the message and cleared the terminal, returning to the table and picking up the package of tasteless leaf rolls.

Rech took in Kaid’s expression, voice solemn. “Assignment?”

Kaid shook his head, setting the gold hoops in his ears to jingling. “Personal.” He looked down at Trast and back to the rest of the agents. “Keep this one out of the oil while I’m gone.”

“Funny, Ir-Dal.” Trast waved a hand at him. “You haven’t lived until your ass has been oil-coated and grabbed by at _least_ eight different hands in the dark.”

Kaid blinked. “I’ll know who to ask if that ever becomes not disturbing.” He nodded to his colleagues, bound hair brushing against the back of his collar. “Goodnight.”

They offered their well-wishes and he left them to it, exiting the cafeteria and following the hallway to the elevator. He dumped his meager meal into a disposal unit by the doorway.

_One foundling. Alleda’s never asked for my opinion about foundlings before._

He wondered in silence as the elevator descended.

 

………

 

Kaid’s apartment was a tidy but spacious affair, cool blues and grays accented with stainless steel, all gentle on the eyes. It wasn’t austere but close, the furniture streamlined, fabric stretched taut over thin cushions which accurately promised little creature comfort. It was a living unit that emphasized modern aesthetics over taking one’s ease.

The place was familiar the way a path frequently followed through wooded terrain was familiar, but without the warmth. No photos of family decorated wall or shelves. No feeding units or toys on the floor to suggest a pet. Though furnished, his place didn’t look particularly lived in despite the shoe-littered mat next to the front door. Even his jacket draped over the back of the chair would’ve netted him few points with most, although a stagehand might’ve appreciated the intent. Nothing was ever truly out of place.

It’d been one of the things that’d worried the psych assessors during each yearly evaluation for mental health during his ten-year stint in Interrogation.

_“You need to cling to something, Agent Ir-Dal. You need roots. There will be times when your position asks a great deal of your self-perception. You’ll be manipulating minds and forcing information out of people, exposed to horrific truths your average citizen couldn’t handle. Pardon the forthrightness, Agent, but get a Camarilla-damned life so this doesn’t become it.”_

Despite the assessors’ collective worry, he’d never failed an evaluation. Nothing to suggest imbalance in his life save for the stringent lack of personal involvements. He doled out vulnerability in measured amounts as needed during appointments, occasionally a bit more or less to convey the occasional self-doubt or response to a particularly harrowing interrogation. It was always just enough to placate the psychiatrists’ insistence that Interrogators had to suffer something or be deemed sociopathic.  
  
It wasn’t all fabricated, but he hadn’t underwent the promised spirals into depression, hadn’t developed any phobias. Some assignments left him with a strong sense of disquiet, but his carefully cultivated outward appearance had afforded him some additional inner temperance beyond the natural supply.

His apartment, not dissimilar to his own past as far as the Protectorate was concerned, was tailored to unremarkable neutrality. Unlike his profile history with the institution - which _did_ contain fabricated information - it wasn’t so much a lie as a judiciously minimal representation of the truth. It was tidy. It did its job.

Kaid padded across the darkwood floor on socked feet, doing away with blazer, tie, and button-up shirt. Alleda’s area of the city bordered Underground territory. A visit wouldn’t necessitate anything so complex as a disguise, but it wouldn’t do to look like a man with a promising wallet. A hooded sweatshirt from the back of a chair replaced what he’d lost, the bottom reaching far enough to hide the belt. He had worn shoes for working out. Not the most humble outfit, but it’d do. He pulled the tie from his hair and shook the black mass free, stowing the little band, and began the mental process of disassociation from his Protectorate persona and into something casual. Within moments, the squared attentiveness in his posture had been displaced by a weary-looking slouch.

He eyed the spare change on the table and pocketed a few coins. Probably unnecessary, but if the foundling was young, they might be uncomfortable around him. A little sleight of mind could stand between information and none.

His hand stayed in the pocket with the coins. He toyed with one, weaving it between fingers. Something, some mental muscle fluttering, preceded the feeling of its disappearance from his hand.

_“I don’t know where they’ll end up!”_

_“No tall tales, Kaid. Pick up your shells when you’re done with them. Your father stepped on one last night and had to bandage that foot up! Keep them where they belong or there’ll be no more shells in this house.”_

_“Mom, I’m not-”_

_“Not arguing with you, Kaid. I made a box for you to keep your collection in. Use it.”_

He withdrew his hand from his pocket. No coin.

_“Mom, I’m not just hiding them. I don’t know where they go.”_

_“Kaid Entas Ir-Dal, that will be quite enough of that. You want to play pretend with your friends, that’s fine. Or write some dha-jinnu stories with that imagination of yours, exercise it that way. But no more nonsense. You’re a smart boy, and you have plenty of talents without making things up.”_

He brushed his thumb pad over the tips of his other fingers. The mental muscle fluttered again.

The coin sat in his palm.

He’d foregone his impossible hobby after he’d devolved and been sent to live among Alleda’s foundlings, scrubbed bare of history and still wrestling with the loss of his fire. The desire had reemerged after his application to the Protectorate had gone through. Here, in his apartment, making coins disappear - exercising that mental muscle - felt right again, and doing it had revealed the ability to extend that strange reach in the _other_ direction. To bring objects back to his hand rather than go hunting in drawers and behind appliances for wherever they’d gone.

He still didn’t understand how he moved them, but the impulse to do it was no less than the urge to create illusions. The “muscle” didn’t wither and deteriorate with disuse; instead, it became an increasingly frustrating itch with only one means of scratching.

First came “knowing” the shape by exploring it with his fingers, then the mental flutter, then another, all the while feeling as though he’d manipulated an infinitesimal fraction of something greater in scope. He associated it with seeing a branch poking into a room through a window, grabbing it, tugging it, and feeling the immense resistance of its unseen source beyond the edge of the frame. The shape was unclear, but the enormity of whatever the branch was attached to was undeniable.

Just a touch of the impossible made possible. Not for the first time, Kaid wondered if this small connection to mystery was at least partially responsible for his unusual inner tranquility. He’d never heard a whisper of anyone else moving things in this secret way during his childhood on Leysar Island. Nor had wind of anything similar reached him after losing his fire and coming into Alleda’s care. He would give much to meet another with the gift, to know if they felt that sense of _smallness_ when they did it, if they felt moments where the boundary between possible and impossible blurred, if they were ever - if only for a moment - certain they could move something bigger.

Perhaps do more than move it.

Change it, maybe.

Kaid emerged from the reverie and pocketed the coin again, heading for the door. Two mysteries occupied him. One would never be solved, he was sure, but the other could.

_Just a foundling. Probably has a juvenile record. Damn it, Alleda._

Kaid passed a mirror and glanced at it. Black eyes, once as orange as Trast’s, stared back at him.

He looked away and left.

 

………

 

Architecture between Kaid’s apartment complex and The Dive graduated from crisp, unadorned edges into crumbling accents, buildings gaining artful curvature but showing their age in advancing disrepair. Paint peeled from wood which had spent enough untreated years outdoors to warp. Concrete slabs buckled where the ground beneath had swelled and sunk with frequent saturation, some portions of the walkways tilted at slight angles, others fragmented. The Dive’s infrastructure budget had never been sizeable, and - while the Drujanai Camarilla often kept its silence when asked about it - potholes in the road had much to say on the subject.

As he passed a large pit in the roadcrete, Kaid noticed some wit had identified it with the caption, “Camarilla shoe-fitting here.” One farther along the street to his left offered more obscure wisdom; the light gray paint dribbled carefully along the edge assuring passerby that, “I live by the hole and drive by the hole.” Still others were marked with crude genitalia or symbols taken from a popular dha-jinnu fantasy book trilogy.

Kaid himself drew little attention as he passed small groups of sullen, slumped teenagers lending their weight to the walls behind them. Some glanced at him and returned to their conversations, only one sizing him up for a possible thieving mark before losing interest.

Kaid wasn’t well-practiced in manipulating minds to illusion while on the move, but he did well enough to persuade the eyes that fell upon him of tears in his clothing and mud on his shoes. Even that didn’t dissuade a few of the Underground-marked teenagers from offering him a chance at gambling or private entertainment for the right money. He ignored them as he passed, marking points on the street where they stood, and wondered if Alleda knew about them yet.

If this was their first day, she might not. She’d be well aware otherwise. Alleda didn’t advertise herself, but she defended her territory without mercy.

He turned down one of the alleys and followed it to the end, then continued north until the businesses and overcrowded tenements gave way to largeish homes and actual yard space. None of the houses here were well kept, some with overgrown grass and most encapsulated by rusted black iron fences with gates. Enormous _silaat_ trees spread their broad, stonewash-blue canopies above, leaving the neighborhood shaded even at midday. The sun’s light filtered down into little pools that speckled everything around him, and the view above offered equally sparse glimpses of the day’s crisp, green-gold sky.

The largest of the houses was a baleful-looking dark gray, bar shutters drawn over the windows and adding to the unwelcoming ambiance of the place. Three stories and a sharply-pitched roof - this despite the absence of deep snow here in the central territories - made it eccentric, but only just, and somehow it fit in among the other half-derelict homes that’d once been testaments to their owners’ considerable wealth. Kaid opened the gate and closed it behind himself before making his way up to the front door.

Brittle paint chips threatened to fall from the doorframe as he knocked.

A minute passed. Two.

Kaid lifted his hand to knock again. He paused, hearing a familiar step-drag-step from behind the door. An equally familiar voice snapped at him from behind it.

“G’wan off! No sale!”

He answered her. “I’m here about the stray.”

Oiled metal turned as the knob did and the door swung inward, revealing a woman’s heavily-tattooed face surrounded by a wild mass of graying brown hair. Dark red eyes peered up at him, and the gap between door and frame widened as she smiled.

Her voice was smoke and kindness. “Decided already, but you bring that opinion of yours right on in here, Kaid Ir-Dal. Also your ass.” She stepped aside and waved the end of her walking stick toward the interior. Kaid followed to the entryway and she shut the door behind him, taking several moments to turn, slide, and tap a variety of locks into place before turning around.

She squinted up at him. “You look thin again ‘round the face.” She pointed first to her own, then back at him. “Gonna eat while you’re here, and I don’t want to hear a fucking thing out of you but, ‘thank you, Alleda.’”

Kaid grinned. He was helpless not to. “Thank you, Alleda.”

Alleda snorted. “Don’t think I can’t hear that indulgent tone, scamp.” She turned toward the hallway and waved at him to join her. “C’mon. A good bowl of stew will wash all that Protectorate slime outta your mouth.”

He followed just behind, familiar surroundings bringing mixtures of good and painful nostalgia in a wash. He tamped it down and focused on his former-

_-But is she really? Does she ever actually stop seeing any of us as hers?-_

-den mother as he spoke. “They have food at the offices. I’m hardly starving.”

She grunted her disbelief. “They have something that you eat, sure, but it isn’t fucking food. Probably plastic-wrapped market leavings gone sour two days beforehand.”

Kaid thought back to the discarded leaf roll package from the cafeteria and decided to stay quiet.

Alleda didn’t. “That’s what I thought.” She stopped by an open doorway and gestured toward the considerable bulk of wooden table beyond it. “Go, sit. There’s still bread out from the herd earlier. Help yourself.”

He did, drawing out a chair and sitting within easy reach of the tray. He plucked off a wide slice of blue-marbled bread from the loaf and scooped a considerable lump of sweet bean paste onto it, appetite returned, the Protectorate’s tasteless leaf rolls forgotten. The loaf looked to be diminished to half even before he’d taken his bit of it, and he wondered how many foundlings were in her care now. Six, maybe.

Alleda returned from an alcove just outside the line of sight from the table and put a bowl of meaty stew in front of him, taking a chair and angling it toward him before she sat. Another slice of the bread disappeared from the tray as she helped herself and spoke between bites. “Five are with me now. Don’t look so surprised; could tell what was going through that head of yours. The others are doing their studies, and Yaray’s out with that ritualist learning trade. New one’ll be down shortly.”

Kaid paused with his spoon hovering over the bowl. “What do we know about the new one?”

She shook her head. “No, no questions. Don’t want to color what you see. I need you to give her the wide-angle view and tell me what _you_ notice.”

Kaid considered pursuing it, then went back to work on his stew. Alleda didn’t give a whit about his Protectorate status. If she wanted to keep things behind her ear, there wasn’t a thing he could do but wait.

A third of his meal had disappeared before a girl, perhaps eight years of age, peered around the doorway at them. She cast her glance-

Kaid’s spoon nearly fell into the bowl before he caught himself.

_Her eyes._

He righted the spoon and turned his attention back to the stew. The girl had been posing her silent question with a look to Alleda, but it had been enough that he’d seen.

Blue. _Blue eyes._

Colored lenses could be bought, but they were generally limited to filmmakers and the obscenely wealthy. Alleda was neither. She did well by her charges, but none would misattribute affluence to them or to her.

 _Blue_ eyes. Natural ones.

The girl spoke softly. “Is this the man?”

Alleda confirmed it around a last mouthful of bread. “This is Kaid.” He heard his old den mother stand, and knew intuitively she’d gestured the girl in. “He’s got some questions for you, Neri. You come and make sure he finishes that stew while he’s here, too, and come upstairs when you’re through, _sa?”_

“Can I have more bread?”

He heard Alleda make her way toward the door and a smaller set of feet pad their way toward the table as she answered. “One piece. Rest is for evening meal.”

Kaid looked up again, nodding briefly and doing his damnedest not to stare at the girl’s - Neri’s - unnerving eyes. He reached over and slid the bread tray toward her as she took the chair Alleda had vacated.

Neri’s timidness seemed to have evaporated. She twisted a raggedly-cut chunk of bread off the loaf and plucked bite-sized pieces from it while staring at him. Or, more specifically, occasionally glancing at his face and focusing her attention on his left shoulder.

Where his devolved tattoo had formed.

Kaid found himself bare of questions to ask, still marveling at the prospect of naturally-occurring blue eyes, but Neri seemed to have her own ideas about conversation. She pulled her considerable quantity of black hair away from her face and played with her bread as she spoke. “You’re almost like me, Kaid.”

He grew still, keeping his voice neutral. “A foundling? I was.”

Her nose wrinkled with an impish smile. “No. You know what I mean.” She stopped plucking at the bread with her free hand and made an open-close-open gesture with her fingers. “What does your mark say?”

Kaid’s skin felt cold. “My mark?”

Neri nodded. “On your arm. I can feel it there but I can’t see it through your shirt. Is it like mine?”

She pointed at his shoulder as though it were necessary, as though he could ever forget the symbols imparted upon his devolution, as though he were dense rather than holding polite conversation while the structure of reality canted several degrees off true.

Despite the surrealness, he hadn’t stopped thinking. Revealing his second “name” defied decades of secrecy he’d maintained throughout his adult life. It would be foolish. It risked everything he’d built for himself, the life he’d constructed, his position. It would make him vulnerable to any self-styled “summoner” who got wind of it.

Kaid set the spoon into the bowl and rolled up the wide sleeve of his sweatshirt, turning in the chair, and bared his upper arm nearly to the shoulder so she could see the markings he’d long ago incorporated into a more traditional - and meaningless - tattoo.

Neri reached forward, fingers tracing the curve-and-flair design, then sat back with a disappointed sigh. “Oh. Only a little one.” She pushed sweater sleeves up to her elbows and showed her forearms to him - as well as the lengthy script that ran up them in warm brown from wrist to somewhere beneath the bunched maroon fabric - with pleading in her eyes. “Are there others like me?”

_Are there others like me?_

How often had he asked himself that question? Reality continued its odd sway as he rolled his own sleeve back down. “Perhaps. I don’t know of any, but there could be.”

She looked down at her arms and rolled down sleeves, bread forgotten atop the table, and fidgeted with the fraying edges of her sweater. She spoke in a forlorn voice. “I was hoping.”

The connection glimpsed in the periphery of mystery was fading. She was withdrawing, and the window of opportunity to get full answers rather than the measured ones most foundlings gave the police would close if he did nothing.

Kaid delved into a pocket of his sweatshirt and withdrew one of his coins - polished copper and blued steel bearing the double-triangle of the Camarillas in relief on one side, “To Rise As One” lettered over the image of three government spires on the other - and held it in his open palm for the girl to see. “I might not be quite like you, but I’m a little strange, too.”

Neri looked up, sweater hem forgotten, and fastened her curious blue eyes on the coin. She said nothing.

He curled his fingers over it, running his thumb claw in a prestidigitator’s flair overtop as he mentally took the coin’s measurement, then opened his hand again. The thread-feeling that bound the coin to his awareness after “moving” it seemed to orient toward the little counter next to them, although it could’ve been behind one of the containers of baking supplies or buried in one of the drawers beneath. He wasn’t sure, and he didn’t look, watching for the girl’s inevitable surprise at his empty palm.

Her reaction was not what he expected.

Kaid’s gut wrenched oddly as Neri’s focus left his hand and she gasped, turning in the direction of his thread with searching intensity. She left the chair and went to the counter, one hand on the marbled surface and her other lifting to move through the air in a slow, methodical circle.

Neri’s voice bloomed with new animation as her hand continued its winding search. _“I can find it!_ I can find it, just don’t let it go yet _don’t pull the string back yet, Kaid!”_

Kaid nearly did draw it back at her words, but held the mental muscle just shy of doing so, heeding her, a pressure building in his chest.

Neri’s hand drew its circles toward the canisters, and she pulled one labelled “fry grit” in heavy letters to the side. Spying the coin, she giggled.

She didn’t reach for the coin.

Fingers splayed, she felt the air between Kaid and the coin along the invisible thread-sensation that bound the latter to his call. Turning her hand and moving it along the same path, she seemed to be letting the thread slide along the tops of her fingers, exploring its existence, not as one amazed by something new but as one marvelling at something finally shared.

Kaid felt the line, the thread, vibrate almost imperceptibly as her hand moved, following the connection between the coin and himself. It tingled somewhere below his scalp every time she reversed direction. Her hand fell, and Neri’s wide blue eyes fastened on him rather than the coin. She was grinning.

“Bring it to your hand again.”

He did, the coin disappearing from the countertop, sliding from visibility to nothingness. As he watched, the weight of it returned to his palm.

She left the counter and returned to her chair, pointing at his hand. “Do like you would if you were getting ready to move it like that again. But don’t move it yet.”

Kaid didn’t trust himself to speak. He nodded, letting his mental measure take in the shape, weight, and chill of the little metal disc as per her order.

Neri perched on the edge of the chair, eyes glinting in the warm, indirect light in the dining room. She grinned at him. “Don’t move it, but don’t let go. I can move it.”

Hope struck the moving pressure in his chest.

A moment passed. And another. Kaid’s hope began to falter.

The coin moved.

One thread became many. The sense of being on the threshold of something beyond his understanding became a half-step beyond that threshold. It was the thrill, the rush of sudden vertigo, a change in air pressure, and a few degrees off true became a proper quarter-turn into the purest feeling of potential. It was an acceleration to profundity. To revelation. The universe became impossibly vast in his mind as their meals cooled on Alleda’s dining table.

Kaid’s coin left his palm and revolved slowly above it.

He felt a hair’s breadth from knowing. Knowing what lay behind the little trick he’d performed since he was a child discovering the ability on a shore far distant from this place. The feeling had gained dimension with the addition of Neri’s influence.

More than that, his heart felt ready to break. Or explode.

For the first time in over two decades, Kaid was on the verge of tears.

Neri seemed to notice something was wrong, and the array of threads dissipated from his awareness as the coin dropped back into his palm. It bounced, falling to the floor, and Kaid made no move to retrieve it.

They sat there quietly until Neri jumped up, ran to Kaid, and threw her arms around him, burying her face in his sweatshirt and sniffling.

“I knew it. I knew I wasn’t the only one. _I knew, Kaid.”_

A second’s awkwardness passed before he gave in, hugging her back.

He let the tears fall.

 

………

 

Sometime after they’d collected themselves, Kaid fetched glasses of water for them both and returned to the table.

They shared their stories in turn.

Neri remembered little about her parents, only that they’d tried to keep her from local government eyes and nearly failed. They’d applied for homeschooling, passed, but she’d had to wear tinted glasses when the proctored progress exams had been administered. Both parents had stressed to her never to tell others how objects and toys could “fly.” Not the proctors, no other adults, no other children.

She also remembered the night of the break-in, hearing her mother scream and her father cursing. She’d run from her home and kept running until she’d plowed head-on into a woman who’d taken one glance at her, told her she had a safe place to stay if she wanted it, and later that her old home wasn’t safe to return to. That’d been a year ago, and since that time she’d showed none save Alleda how objects could “fly.”

That was, until she’d sensed the shared oddity in Kaid. Until she’d seen him move the coin and understood that he, too, knew about the Big Other Thing separated from the everyday only by the thinnest veils. That the veil had _edges_. Or holes in it. Ways to bypass the veil if one only knew how to reach for them.

Kaid told her his tale, too. It was strange to describe aloud, finally, everything that he’d long held secret.

First “losing” the shells he’d tied to the ends of his hair as a child, feeling them slip away and searching the sand behind himself for the missing ones. He’d had little control at first, but practice had sensitized him to the thread that connected him to the objects he transported elsewhere. His mother refusing to believe.

Then had come the wrenching days during which his fire left him, a twisting and yanking free of something so vital it felt impossible he’d live without it. There was physical pain, strikes of it that left him writhing, but the emptiness left in the wake of his devolution had been worse. The island’s elder had recommended he be relocated to the Greater Continent, and to the care of a woman who’d found success in keeping some devolved children from falling into the Underground’s clutches.

Then Alleda. Showing her. And learning to refine his trick so he could bring back the little objects with which he practiced. Alleda never yelling at him even when his practice supplies found their way into her food stores or under piles of laundry. Never telling him to stop, but to practice until he could get a bead on where the objects landed so he could pick up after himself.

While telling his own tale, Kaid realized why Alleda had brought this foundling to his attention, and he felt a surge of fond gratitude.

They shared companionable silence for a few minutes, Kaid interrupting it once to refill their glasses at the sink. Neri broke his heart anew with another question.

“What am I, Kaid?”

The question had occurred to him, too, but he’d hoped she wouldn’t ask. Now she had, and he found himself mentally scrabbling for a response, any response that might ease the tiny note of despair in her voice.

He set his glass on the table, still stalling, and glanced again at her eyes.

_Almost looks like light through painted glass…_

Inspiration struck.

Kaid smiled at her. “May I visit your mind?”

Neri blinked at him, avid interest replacing the misery in her expression. “You make the mind-pictures?”

He nodded. “Illusionist, yes. I can tell you a tale, but it might be more fun if I show-”

She squealed, delighted, sadness abandoned. “The others will die of jealousy when I tell them!” A thought furrowed her brow. “Can I tell? Or is this secret police stuff?”

Kaid chuckled. “You can tell them. And Alleda if you want to.” The latter would certainly chew him out for it, but the risk was worth seeing Neri happy again. “May I?”

Neri nodded. “Do I close my eyes?”

“You can, but it isn’t necessary.”

She closed them, swinging her feet over the floor tiles.

Kaid closed his own, building the images in his mind and “seeing” them project outward. Sharing here was easy, blessedly easy compared to imposing illusions on an adult mind. Neri had few mental barriers in place. Scratching his Drujanai itch was less arduous yet somehow more deeply satisfying than it was with unaware or reluctant minds, as though the girl had taken an incorporeal version of his hand and begun leading him.

First came the basic shapes. Sounds. Arrangement.

He spoke as the vision gained definition and color.

“When I was little, I would visit a friend’s house, and we’d often spend the night outside on the beach. My friend’s father would build us a fire so we’d be warm, since we were too young to be trusted to do it alone. Sometimes - and these were the best nights - he would sit with us as the sun set and tell us the story of Tem Ashardi.”

Kaid showed her the beach of his home village. Greenish gold in the sky transitioned to a full green, then orange, then violet with a thin haze of gold and red along the horizon. The colors reflected and distorted on the water below, a moving drizzle that broke where waves formed before rushing into the sand. The fire pit had been outlined with large sea-glass orbs his friend’s father would rescue whenever he went coral diving, and the firelight inside diffused through the bluish orbs into a softer, tinted glow. Blue-white sand grew dimmer and gained color from both sunset and orbs, the latter painting the surrounding area with splotches of aquamarine light. From the house behind them, tubular sea-glass chimes hooted and tinkled in the wind.

He let the image fade to a neutral grey landscape and built another as he spoke. “Before the Wars, it’s said that people knew very little conflict. It happened, but on the very smallest scales, and each loss of life or bond was measured a tragedy and mourned as such. Do you know where we get the phrase, _‘Tem Ashardi adassi?’”_

Neri’s voice was soft, awed. “No.”

“We use it to mean, ‘lifelong bond,’ or, ‘chosen family,’ but it comes from a story of two long-ago tribal elders who hated each other so much that they left their village, set up tents just outside a cave entrance nearby, and spent their every waking moment sitting outside the cave arguing with each other over whether or not a monster lived in it.”

She giggled, and Kaid smiled as he went on. “I’m serious. The village had decreed their constant arguments a disruption to the happiness of the tribe, and so they left voluntarily. Neither cared; both were relieved to finally yell at each other without interruption. They’d wake up, shuffle out and make tea, sit down outside the cave, and their heated debate would resume from wherever it’d left off the day before.”

He showed her a cave entrance, suitably gloomy on the inside, surrounded by _silaat_ trees and underbrush spreading cool shade over the moss beneath. Sunlight filtered in from the right, morning sunlight, and birdsong could be heard from the forested area on either side. Though he had no idea what the elders themselves had looked like, Kaid supplied a pair of tents facing each other a small distance from the cave. Flames from the cooking fire in the middle licked the underside of a hanging teakettle. The spout blew steam into the air, joining the birds’ singing with an increasingly urgent whistle.

“They made tea and meal over the same fire, eating together, retiring to sleep at an agreed-upon time. If one felt too stiff to trek down to the village for supplies, the other would go and get enough for both of them. They alternated use of a walking cane. And they argued. Rain or sun, taking their ease in the heat or bundled in furs in the coldest snows, they argued. And neither one ever went inside the cave.”

Kaid paused for effect. “But the residents of the cave were very interested in what was going on outside.”

The scene changed again. They were inside the cave, speeding through networks of tunnels and wider chambers. Light from the entrance faded into near darkness, replaced by dim veins of bluish light in the rock surface that wound, spread, and split into smaller filaments like an oversimplified map of neurons. As they reached the first few chambers, the luminous netting in the rocks grew bright enough to see by.

On the islands where I’m from,” Kaid paused again, “there is an old, superstitious belief that Suldea is more than a planet. That it lives in awareness.” He winced inwardly but went on. “According to the tale, the part of Suldea that connects to its surface lives in these caves and is known as Tem Ashardi. Like the GIN network, they have a collective awareness, but their network is made of many different kinds of plants.”

The smaller chambers gave way to a large one. Little steps, plateaus, and layered tiers of stone peppered the area, and the glowing veins seemed to gather in clusters and brighten on the topmost surfaces. Plants in seemingly endless variety bulged, weaved, bloomed, and sprayed wide fans of leaves and flowers in every place where stone hadn’t erupted from the dirt.

Prominent among them stood huge, white, vase-shaped lilies, all of which grew directly over the bright convergence points of luminous threads in the stone. Most were little bigger than an adult’s open hand, but some had grown so large that a child smaller than Neri could’ve crawled inside and drawn the petals overtop themselves. Light from the rock face below seemed to afford them their own subtle glow.

“But it wasn’t _quite_ like GIN. One part of the network was made of something very different.”

A soft shuffling sound preceded the appearance of large sets of wings beating in the air throughout the chamber. They were flat wings, butterfly wings, but many times the size of even the largest surface species. Their dance enriched the place, a breath of animation giving life to the image. Occasionally, one would stray close enough to the rock face for the light to filter up to - and through - the wings.

For split seconds, when they did, their colors blossomed into vibrant life. The wings were section-patterned in broken rainbows almost too vivid to truly see, so brilliantly alive that it seemed impossible for memory to ever honor them in recollection alone. The wings were translucent, almost transparent save the black outlines dividing one irregular shape of orange from the concentrated blue next to it, or the almost ribald purple next to the blue.

“The butterflies would sometimes travel up near the tunnel’s entrance and watch the two elders argue with each other.” Kaid smiled to himself. “But never just their arguments. They saw each pouring tea for the other, or carrying goods up from the village so both lived comfortably. They watched the walking stick get passed between them as one or the other had need of it, or check on the other during the seasons’ worst nights, covering their companion with blankets or refreshing the water cup by their bedroll for morning.”

Kaid felt mildly uncomfortable and shifted position, sitting back in the chair he could no longer see or even precisely feel. “The butterflies began thinking of the two as theirs, their children, maybe, or at least harmless. They decided among themselves to reveal their existence to the elders, and flew out close to the cave’s entrance where snow had begun to fall, staying just inside.

“The elders weren’t in their chairs, though, but laying in the snow. One had fallen dead from their chair, and the other lay holding them and crying. The cold was getting to the other already, but they refused to leave their companion to seek shelter. It wasn’t long before the second elder succumbed to the cold. The butterflies returned to their chamber, mourning.”

In the chamber, the rapid wingbeats had subdued, and none of the butterflies were aloft. Most were scattered across rock faces. Although the coloration of their wings spent longer in brilliance with the stone’s light passing through the panes, their collective movement indicated a shared pause in the goings-on of their lives. None made any move to fly.

“Tem Ashardi itself knew loss. Neither plant nor butterfly lived forever, but this loss was new to them. The elders had seemed so long-lived; many generations of butterflies had been born, lived, and died while the beings outside seemed never to age. They'd been a constant in their awareness long enough to be perceived as permanent as the chamber stone. However, the two elders had proven they, too, had a life cycle which came to an end. And within that blanket of Tem Ashardi's mourning, there grew an anger at the injustice of it. At death itself. At the impermanence of everything while the rocks, the soil, and the cave went on seemingly forever, unchanged.”

A few of the butterflies’ wings beat faster. Not enough to bring flight, but in recognition of… something.

“Tem Ashardi thought long about the stone. And about the butterflies, the way each of their distinct patterns was always lost when one died, about the loss of one of the great lilies when it finally withered and crumbled to dust. And it spoke to both butterfly and lily as it made its decision. ‘I cannot prolong life,’ it said, ‘but there will be no more nothingness at the end of it.”

The view came deeper into the chamber and focused on one of the lilies, a huge specimen, lit from below. A butterfly whose flight seemed ragged landed gently just on the inside, its thin legs shockingly black against the soft, almost fuzzy petals. Its wings beat slowly. Tiredly.

“Each life was to leave a legacy from then on. A lily would bond early in its life with a young butterfly, and, at the closing of their lives, the butterfly would rejoin the lily to form something new.”

The butterfly crawled deep into the lily. The lily itself seemed to curl up around it, closing, shriveling up into a crumpled, desiccated mass.

Then expanded.

The petals rose from the withered little pod anew, no longer white but painted in the dazzling, unique pattern of colors of the butterfly’s wings. The light from below imbued it with brilliance that didn’t fade or flicker in and out of existence with movement.

But it was no longer alive. The appearance of stained glass had become crystalline proper, inert, as lifeless as the light-striped stone to which it adhered. It was an image of both lily and butterfly as one.

A memorial.

Kaid allowed the image to fade and opened his eyes. Though projecting it had been effortless, it seemed Neri was reluctant to part with the vision, and withdrawing seemed weighted. He was able to do it, but the effort felt clogged with her desire to keep it there.

Perhaps his own, too.

Neri’s eyes opened and a tear slid from one of them. “I don’t understand. That was beautiful, but I still don’t know what I am.”

He offered her a shaky smile. “What we are isn’t so important.” The hell it wasn’t, but telling her otherwise served no purpose. “What’s important is what we leave behind, what we make of what we are. Every butterfly and plant in Tem Ashardi is unique, but they’re all Tem Ashardi. We’re djinn. Our eyes and our talents don’t matter.”

She seemed to consider his words, staring first at the counter where he’d one placed a coin, then back at him with the tentative beginning of a smile. “You’ll come visit more, won’t you, Kaid?”

The pressure in his chest moved again. “I will.”

“You’ve got math work to do upstairs, Neri. Go on and see to it.” Alleda step-slid through the doorway and made brooming motions with her hands. “Go on. I’ll make sure and extract a promise out of this scamp to visit you before he goes.”

Neri turned to look at her, turned back to Kaid, and slid off the chair. _“Sa,_ Alleda.”

She turned to go, stopped, turned back, and ran to Kaid. She threw her arms around him again. “You’d better come back. Tem Ashardi stick together.”

This time Kaid hugged her back without pause. “I will.” He let go and grinned at her. “You’d better go before we _both_ get in trouble.”

Neri giggled, probably at the idea of a Protectorate Investigator in trouble with her den mother, and sped off, disappearing beyond the open doorway. Kaid stood, lifting an eyebrow at Alleda.

His old den mother lifted a hand in negation. “No, you did well, scamp. I heard enough.” Her hand dropped while the other found a new grip on her walking stick. “You gonna come back to see all of us, aren’t you? Don’t make me chase you down for lying to a little girl, Kaid. I’ll go to those offices myself and put you right on your ass.”

Kaid walked up to the doorway, passing her, and turned to face her again. “I have no intention of breaking that promise.” He paused. “Her parents.”

Alleda shook her head, closing her eyes. “Don’t know what got to ‘em, but they were Underground. Someone knows who she is.” She opened her eyes and levelled her red gaze at Kaid. “She’s safe now. I’ll string up anyone who even thinks about showing up at my door.”

The pressure in Kaid’s chest moved, undulated, urging.

He spoke. “Can she be…”

It was Alleda’s turn to lift a fuzzy gray caterpillar of eyebrow at him. “Spit it out, scamp. Saw this coming a year away.”

“What’s her adoptive potential?”

Alleda’s mouth grew wide in a smile. “I’ll make sure it’s top notch.”

The pressure was gone. Kaid smiled. “Then I’ll see you in a few days.”

She nodded. “I’ll keep a stew going.”

He’d never been one for hugs, and Alleda had never offered. He nodded, turned, and made his way toward the door.

“Kaid!”

He turned back.

Alleda lifted a finger as if to admonish him, then dropped it with a sigh. “You’re doing right, scamp. Always have.”

It sat unspoken. _I’m proud of you._

Kaid paused in acknowledgment, then nodded and turned away.

He saw himself back out into the sun-speckled shade of afternoon. Though the direction of the sun had changed little, it seemed brighter. The air fresher. He’d made his decision, and there was much to do between now and several days hence.

And he wasn’t unhappy at all.


End file.
